Category Archives: BBC

The Head of School of SimVis will be giving this illustrated talk at BBC Scotland as part of Digtial Cities Glasgow week in March:

Everywhere we look we see the resurgence of VR which, in the last 24 months, seems to have become ubiquitous within our society. Even the mannequins in the shop windows, clad in the latest fashions, have HMDs strapped to their heads. VR is everywhere, from classrooms to therapy couches to TV adverts and bargain buckets in the local petrol station.

VR is being pushed as the modern-day panacea for all our ills and commercial challenges. We’ve been here before and this time we’re in a much stronger place from a technological point of view but there’s still so many improvements we can make and pitfalls we must avoid. We must be mindful not to force the square VR peg into the real world round hole; VR really isn’t for everyone.

In this talk I’ll touch on the wonders of VR, the good. But I’ll also talk about the pitfalls, the bad and the ugly. What do we need to watch out for? What are the real negatives of VR both from a social and physiological perspective? And importantly, what advances are we likely to see in the coming years.

Last week, the BBC highlighted a 3D fly-through of the Mackintosh Building laser scan data that will be used to help with the building’s restoration and renovation. You can also catch a quick glimpse of the Visualisation lab at the DDS.

A few days ago I had the fantastic (and nerve-wracking) experience of live radio, on BBC Worldwide’s Click radio broadcast. And in front of a live audience in BBC Scotland’s Pacific Quay headquaters! I sneakily took a photo of the audience before switching off my phone – just before the final group of audience members arrived. Standing room only at the back.

View of the audience at the live BBC Click recording

It felt like the programme was over almost as soon as it began – I had lots I wanted to say about the Scottish Ten and other DDS projects that I just didn’t manage. When pushed to answer in ten seconds how the data captured by the project is used, I somehow didn’t manage to give the example from Skara Brae, where Scottish Ten data from 2010 and data acquired by Historic Scotland in 2014 are being compared to help monitor the beach erosion that is threatening the site, and to help develop a management strategy to help protect this amazing world heritage site for future generations.

The podcast of the programme features some extra Q&A – and one of our PhD students, Jessica Argo, was able to discuss her project exploring the therapeutic use of ambisonic audio.

Getting to show the #bbcclickradio team around the DDS facilities before the programme was fun – and certainly less nerve-wracking. Gareth got to play with foley in the student recording studio, and then to experience a virtual Edinburgh in 3D – while only yards from BBC Scotland’s Glasgow headquarters.

You can listen to the programme here, or download the podcast with extra content from here (Podcast available until 12th March 2015).

The Digital Design Studio is home to The Dubbing Theatre – a professional recording and dubbing studio, working primarily in radio, television and film. Paul Wilson who runs this facility also helps support the teaching on our MDes in Sound for The Moving Image, when not working on commercial projects.

Broadcast last night, Pipers of the Trenches was a BBC Scotland special on the role of the bag-pipers in the Scottish regiments in World War I. For the programme, historian Michael Stedman worked with the sound specialists at the DDS, Paul Wilson and Ronan Breslin, on recreating the sounds of the battlefield. This was then played back in our Arup Ambisonic sound lab – which provides a full 360 degree audio experience – to create an authentic and terrifying WWI soundscape.

The program will be online for a further six days on BBC iPlayer – here. You can read more about the DDS’ involvement in the making of the programme over on The Glasgow School of Art press blog.